Gyroscopes! Whoa!

[Mat_D]

How on earth does a childs toy gyroscope balance at nearly 90 degrees to the "eiffel tower" stand that comes with it? Why does gravity not work properly and make it fall? I know that the wheel is spinning very fast but if you think about it, its still lump of metal with mass! I bet you that resolving the froces at work is a nightmare.....

[jake-the-peg]

Not really:

http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfadd/1350/11Rolling/Gyros.html

If you really want a laugh though do a google search for gyroscope and anti-gravity and see all the "head the balls" come out of the woodwork

[Peter Pedant]

This is very well done in M204 - an open uni course called math methods and modelling.

The bit about things moving - means that it is included in chapters with titles like 'dynamics' -and is quite interesting. its one of the things that has to be taught and I found very diffciult to pick up from a book only

[Peter Pedant]

The site jake the peg has given is really good - but ya kinda have to know what vectors are to follow it. - the 'x' is a cross product and not a multiplication.

[tony1941]

Unmathematically: Think of it from the point of view of a lump of the metal: It's being constrained to follow the circular path (very quickly) due to the rotation and the fact that it's "glued" to all its neighbours.  In any one position, by the time it's decided to start falling due to gravity, all its neighbours have pulled it around the axis of rotation to a new position... and so on... etc.  The net result is the slow precession around the vertical axis of your tower.  The whole thing depends on the speed of rotation being high enough.